116 hours.
677 pages.
184,000 words.
I re-sequenced the beginning and three other spots that had me scratching my head on how the first edition had gotten it wrong. I added a chapter to the ending to make it flow as it should. And tightened small things on almost every other page.
Now it’s off to my copy editors.
The cover is progressing.
Very soon, Precious. Very soon.
I now turn to the editing of CURSE.
Check out Tor’s 2009 fall catalog. Lots of great titles coming up including one of particular interest.
As of 5 PM this last Saturday I have finished 15,000 words of the climax of Curse of a Dark God. I think I have another 10,000 to go and the book will be done. I’m so close to the end of this draft! So don’t let the progress bars fool you. The ending is coming together fabulously–lots of spectacle, big reveals, and major heroics. At least, I think so.
While working on this, I had to spend a number of hours finding out how strong a wind must be to pick up humans and stones. I also needed to know the destructive forces of various classes of tornados and hurricanes. Why would I need to know such things? I write fantasy, for Leroy’s sake!
(Yes, that’s good English; I’m a writer, and one of my prerogatives is to make up silly versions of common expletives using the names of friends and enemies.)
Here’s why: I just can’t write if I don’t believe in what I’m writing. And when I’ve got monsters (skir) that can generate winds that will be used in a siege, well, I had to know the terminal velocities of what these creatures could throw, and what that might mean for fortress defense. I had to know the limitations and ramifications.
I won’t rehearse all the fascinating details (and it WAS fascinating), but all that research did lead me to a wonderful documentary. It’s called Secrets of Lost Empires 2: Medieval Siege and was produced by Nova in 2000. You can get it on Netflix or Amazon. In the film, fifty carpenters worked day and night to create and test what they dubbed “the fourteenth century version of the atom bomb”–the trebuchet (tre-byou-SHAY). The trebuchet as the most popular throwing machine in Europe during the middle ages. If you love the history of medieval war, you’ll love this film. You might want to add to it a reading of the excellent Ancient and Medieval Siege Weapons by Konstantin Nossov, which you can get via the inter-library loan program.
I’ll share two cool factoids for you history fans. “Catapult” means “shield-breaker,” “cata” meaning break or
penetrate and “pelta” being the name of the shield used by the Greek light infantry. The original catapults were NOT big spoons–they sped arrows and balls along a track like a crossbow. However, instead of using the spring force of a bow, they used torsion-springs, which is what you get when you twist fibers that want to be straight. In the case of catapults the fibers were ropes made out of animal sinews or hair (horse or human, a woman’s hair being considered the best) and soaked in oil. Click on the image to see a larger picture.
A modern example of a torsion-spring are those balsa wood airplanes with propellers attached to a rubber band that’s hooked to the belly of the plane. To fly them, you rotate the propeller round and round, twisting the rubber band. Then you let the propeller go. Because the rubber wants to be straight, it reverses the twist, spinning the propeller the opposite way you twisted it.
You might think these torsion-spring engines were weak. But one catapult was reported as being powerful enough that an arrow shot from it broke through a shield, and the armored warrior standing behind it, at a distance of 400 yards! Hence, the name.
The other factoid is that “trebuchet” comes from the French term meaning to overthrow. If you saw Return of the King, you’ll recognize them as the engines used on the towers of Minas Tirith. Trebuchets are simply an evolution of the staff sling. When it came to breaking castle walls, there was nothing more effective until the cannon appeared. Of course, in my book I use them a bit differently. You’ll see.
One funny thing. I watched the movie with my oldest who was just as fascinated with the engines as I was. When she was telling my wife about the film, she kept referring to trech-uh-butts. Which, I guess, is as fair an attempt at “trebuchet” as any. However, my wife kept picturing buttocks and couldn’t figure out what the heck my daughter was talking about–“You were watching what with your father?!”
The French make things so hard . . .
***
The Monday after CONduit I left for work in Mexico and then Vegas. I didn’t get back until this week. So I just wanted to say I had a great time at the con. Loved chatting with all the folks there.
It was great to see the Larry Correia, Paul Genesse, Jessica Day George, Isaac Stewart (and his brother Dan), Mette Harrison, Eric James Stone, Darren Egget, Julie Frost, Sandra Tayler, LE Modesitt, Josh Perkey, Nicole (whose husband is an Orem cop and I lost his number), Daniel Who-I-Sacrificed-to-My-Editor, and the Dungeon Crawlers Radio guys.
It was also nice to speak with Julie Wright who was one of the initial judges for the Whitney Awards. She’s always nice to chat with, but this time it was especially nice since she said reading Servant of a Dark God was like eating chocolate. I’ll take chocolate praise any day.
I also met new author Janci Patterson who just sold a YA with a great premise. It’s called SKIP and is about a young girl whose parents are divorced. The girl has to go stay with her dad who lives in a trailer and is a bounty hunter. I’m a sucker for bounty hunter stories. Especially this one, because she goes out with him and falls in love with one of the guys her dad has to haul in. I’ve slaughtered the pitch, but I got that good old writer’s envy when she told me about it. Can’t wait to read it.
I also got to see Barbara Hambly. I was at LTUE when she was there like 20 years ago. We loved her stuff. She suddenly dropped out of the writing scene in the early 90’s and now I know why–it appears Del Rey dropped all their midlist authors except for Anne McCaffery and someone else. Hambly was one of the causalities.
***
After Hambly’s main address, I sat with a few authors and had a brief discussion about the book industry where it was suggested the industry was shrinking–fewer readers, fewer sales, doom, doom, doom. But that is exactly opposite all the data I’ve seen.
So I’m very sanguine about the book industry’s prospects. Today’s youth seem to be able to play computer games AND read in great quantities.
***
Finally, one last bit of news. Robinson Wells was the one of the main ones to start the Whitney Academy and the Whitney Awards. Well, he just got some fabulous news. Here’s the announcement from Publishers Marketplace: “Robison Wells’ YA debut dystopian thriller VARIANT, a modern-day LORD OF THE FLIES, set at a boarding school where not everything is as it seems and every day is a fight for survival, in a significant deal, in a three-book deal, to Erica Sussman at Harper Children’s.”
For those of you who don’t know, here are the PM deal categories.
Oh, baby. Someday. Someday. Of course, I’m nothing but happy for Mr. Wells!
Reminder: Starting TODAY and running all week long, X96 radio will be doing book giveaways of Servant of a Dark God (on the radio and streaming online).
Listen to the morning Radio From Hell program (Gina, Bill, & Kerry), Kerry Jackson’s Geek Show, and Todd Nuke ‘Ems afternoon shows.
A true story.
There once was a spider who climbed into a lush, seven-foot fir tree somewhere in Oregon. This happened sometime in September or October. She wove a small, silken pad deep among the needles and laid hundreds of eggs upon it. Then she spun layer after layer of silk over them, sealing them in a warm, white chamber. Her life’s work.
Having fulfilled the measure of her creation, she went where all spiders go. But where is that? Are spiders elegant biological machines, or are they living souls? I don’t know. Perhaps at some future date we’ll be blessed to understand such things.
What we do know is this: as autumn cooled, the temperature dropped below fifty degrees, and her eggs slipped into dormancy. October passed into November. And sometime in the last days of November or early December, humans with chainsaws arrived for the final harvest.
The tree was cut, loaded onto a truck, bundled into a refrigerated trailer, and shipped hundreds of miles away to a Smith’s Marketplace in Logan, Utah. There is stood with a number of other trees in the area just outside the front doors in the snow and cold and fluorescent lights. How many days and nights it waited there, we don’t know. But one evening, a mother and father and their four girls arrived to find their Christmas tree.
They walked among the evergreens, feeling for soft needles, breathing in the deep, resinous smells. They found the tree. It was perfect. They paid for it, tied it to the top of their minivan, and drove home over the mountains to the south end of the lake. Then they set it up, the father complaining, as he always did, about the goofy screw-stabilizers, strung the lights, and hung ornaments from past Christmases. The little tree filled the room with warmth, scent, and memory.
On Christmas morning they came down to open presents. As the sun rose, the light through the front window illuminated the tree. And something was different.
The branches shimmered.
The girls peered closer to investigate.
And found thin silk filaments. Everywhere. And then, to their shock, they saw that the whole tree was alive, moving with hundreds of baby spiders. A small horde that had warmed over the days and hatched silently sometime in the deep night after Santa and Mrs. Claus had gone to bed. A small horde that had then gotten to work—tiny, mad elves weaving their own gossamer garlands through the branches.
When the girls realized what they were seeing, there were shrieks of horror. Then the father, not knowing what else to do, escorted the tree, its decorations, and mad elves outside into the cold. The father returned, closed the door, and the whole family stood there, looking at the tree out on the deck, a bit stunned.
All these years later, it’s one of our family’s warm and funny memories. But if you ponder it just a little longer, it’s also one that lingers.
Are spiders merely elegant machines? Or are they living souls? Do they have claim upon us? Should a swarm of locusts or an infestation of roaches be preserved?
I will leave such questions to you, Dear Reader.
In the meantime, I wish you the merriest of Christmases. Whatever you believe or don’t, may you receive a measure of divine light this season—and reflect it, to brighten the world, if even just a little, for creatures both great and small.
John
Just a reminder. I’ll be meeting the public and chatting about my book in Utah this week. David Farland and Larry Correia will there as well. It’s a three-for-one deal.
| Thursday, October 22 6 pm – 8 pm |
Book signing and release party | Logan, UT | Borders 1050 N Main St. Suite B-2 Logan, UT 84341 435-787-0678 |
| Friday, October 23 4 pm – 6 pm |
Book signing and release party | Orem, UT | Barnes & Noble 330 East 1300 South Orem, UT 84058 801-229-1611 |
| Saturday, October 24 12 pm – 2 pm |
Book signing and release party | Layton, UT | Barnes & Noble Layton Market Center 1780 North Woodland Park Drive Layton, UT 84041 801-773-9973 |
| Saturday, October 24 3 pm – 5 pm |
Book signing and release party | West Jordan, UT | Barnes & Noble Jordan Landing 7157 Plaza Center Drive West Jordan, UT 84084 801-282-1324 |
For all of you in the greater Salt Lake City area, we have three major publishing houses–Tor, Baen, and DAW–donating lots of free goodies for the signings. 40 free hardcovers, ARCs, and other promo stuff. Some of it you can’t get in stores. For example, you can get a free ARCs of Larry Correia’s VENDETTA while they last.
Here are the folks that will be there along with my beautiful self.
Come to the one at Barnes & Noble from 11 am – 1 pm or the one at Borders from 3 pm – 5 pm. See my calendar for address and details.
See you there!
Comments are closed.
Awesome!
Can you post the first chapter now?
…unless you already have. 🙂 I’m not sure if the chapters 1-4 that you have up are from the new line-edit version, or from some older draft.
You impatient thing! 🙂
It still needs a copy edit. But know that the first chapter is what I have on the sample page–the hunt converging on Sugar’s house. You won’t notice huge changes in those first chapters. Most of the edits there were indeed line edits, fixing spots to make the sentences and action sequences flow a bit better.